Hope for the Present

 

By Jack Varden

Blood and bone. Breath and spit. What does the world have to offer? 

Clear skies that gray; plants that wither. Passing pleasures for permanent pain. It has a limited series of “for nows.” For now the skies are clear. For now the skies are gray. You can find this beautiful or ugly depending on your mood. Moods are everything. They encapsulate each event in our lives, shaping our horizons. 

My moods thunder and drift without me, moving through me and over me, expanding and contracting without my consent. Am I my own victim? Torturer and tortured within the same being? Why do blood and bone need to feel so much? 

I can only guess that it’s an accident.  Slime molds get along just fine without moods. Or perhaps there was a time when our emotions mattered more to the tribe. 

Long ago, love kept us together and gave us strength in numbers. A constant state of anxiety kept us out of the lion’s jaws. It drove us inland and indoors, eventually leading us into ourselves as inquiry and introspection. Then we were forced out again, out into the repetitive, working world of assembly lines, pallets, customers and fluorescent lights. Those damn fluorescent lights. 

Cars everywhere, people everywhere, each oblivious to the oceans of silence and space that surround us all. 

With the spotlight blinding us, we fumble for greatness, but settle for Netflix. Whether I turn into a potato, all eyes on the tube, or see the world and gather riches, blood and bone is what I am. Far from lions, I make my own beasts and call them loneliness, low self-esteem, and chronic doubt. 

For even as the world changes, the blood still burns with the same primordial heat, and I find myself in a culture I can’t understand—lost but pretending that I’m on my way to something more. 

All the while I’m hoping for a day when everything stops, and we collectively turn back home and find each other again. But, short of a global catastrophe, we’re already well on our way to a drab world where no one thrives or asks themselves why they’re not thriving. I have no hope for humanity’s future, but I have hope for the present. 

In this moment we can transcend all the bullshit and see each other as this magical blood and bone, these wild emanations of the cosmos. For me, this involves fully acknowledging the unavoidability of suffering. Through suffering, we find each other, we meet on a common ground. We’re both here, both in pain, now what do we do about it? We witness it in each other and use it to build ourselves up, creating the most lyrical versions of ourselves. 

This transformation and perseverance are the essence of a resilient bliss that’s identical to awareness. We discover that just being is enough—everything else is extra. 

Being comes first, even before our bodies, because we’re aware long before we know what we’re aware of. Existence comes first; knowledge of existence comes later. Through knowledge of blood and bone, and the suffering of change, we can step back into basic presence which is free from everything. 

We don’t step back because of a desire for transcendence or something holy, but because we’re so fucking exhausted being ourselves. When we step back, we’re not ourselves anymore, we just are. You can’t remain in that state  of mind, nor should you. Pure being is a temporary reprieve from all the stress and otherness. It isn’t permanent—nothing is. 

Clinging to altered states is unhealthy, even if they seem like “the truth,” or whatever. Experience them, and then move on, letting them become part of you. So, the world still has things to offer. You just have to get more proactive about it as you get older.

When good days grow elusive, you can come to see the good in the bad, using it as a means to clarity. 

 

With the spotlight blinding us, we fumble for greatness, but settle for Netflix. ~ Jack Varden Share on X

 

Jack Varden is a writer, poet, psychologist, philosopher and Buddhologist from Illinois.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Pixabay

 

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